Tales and legends of smoky drams, mystical peats and seducing waters. I blog in English and Finnish from now on.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Rye Rye time for Rye Juuri (Root) of Kyrö

I didn’t go through square one here. I have been following news about the Finnish Kyrö Distillery Company and even got to taste their one dram earlier (the #, the story can be found here ) . I think it was not a good step to skip first two stops. The good is that I’ll have now a fairly good guess where this dram is heading. The bad, is that the starting point is not that satisfying.

This is about the unaged root. This is the root for whisky that is coming out 2017, about three years from now. This is the stuff they put into barrels and then start a long wait. Or actually, I don’t think this one is being put to barrels since this is only 46.3% in the boost. It’s perhaps missing around 20 %-units of it’s strength. But this is what we’ve got. It is a small batch product, made with passion and love. And they use rye of course. Basically, this is a foundation for something very Finnish.

The nose is not into my shelf of books. It has rye, yes but also rawness and dullness of the moonshine. I can’t say it is pleasing – far from it. But since we are bold we sip it.

There is a big amount of rye in the taste. Lots of it. And also brutal rawness of booze and moonshine. It feels like a fresh booze that has been filtered through a rye bread. It will curl lots of hair in your body. If this were full strength, I don’t think there would be any hair left since they’d be running. I do like strong vodka. Strong whisky. Strong taste. But I am frank and I say, that this is not in my favorites.

Then why do I taste it again then? Since I’ve tasted the # hush hush and I know where this root is heading. It has a lots of rye and it has a story. And if you drink enough of it, you will eventually like it.

I am waiting for their next versions… and especially the final product. This tells you that much. You should taste this – just to get the comparison. And when compared to many whiskies – you can taste the rye a long afterwards the last sip.

I also have heard, that people like to use this in drinks to get a intriguing (in a good way) taste of rye.